A while back I was talking with my son in law (an engineer who works for Sask power) about new generating equipment. IF I understood correctly, he told me that if Saskatchewan wanted to build its first nuke plant, it would have to build a second one to have on standby. IOW, they'd need to build double what they can legally claim for continuous output. This is to ensure the stability of the grid.

It seems to me that maybe wind generation would be better for dedicated usage, like aluminum reduction or whatever. When the wind is up, they can make more, when it goes down, they make less. They could achieve an average production level that would not be critical minute by minute.

Hu,

It doesn't have to be all or none. When the wind is not blowing, they take power off the grid. When it is, they use what they need and feed the excess TO the grid.

Generators don't max out when there are more than one on the grid. The battery, again. If you have 6 batteries in parallel, you will draw them all down equally, unless you take one out of the circuit. Same with half a dozen gen plants. If they are all feeding the grid, they will share the demand. If the demand becomes uneconomical, they will take a gen off line, simply disconnect and go to standby with a slow roll.

They don't like to shut down boilers for the heat/cool cycle, and you don't want 40 foot long rotors sitting, as they will slump. Even 67 inch D rotor will sag from sitting between bearings 40 foot apart.

I don't know who Vestas is, unless that is the Spanish company. I have no problem with them, either. We are building towers and nacelles and gens, here, and we are erecting them with American workers. At least, I have not heard of offshore millwrights coming to erect the equipment.

If this pays some Americans a check every week, why bitch? We are in bad times. 15 million unemployed, if we/they, put a few thousand to work, all to the good. Maybe some repair work for the machinists here, those who can take on work that may be a bit bigger than some of you might have machine capacity for.

Possibly Babbited bearings, so don't know how many could do that work. Bore after re-Babbiting, OK, but how many could make a new one?

There will be work for US machinists in parts and repair.They are still simply machines. MG and others could do the repair work. Hell, some of the guys I worked with in Westinghouse opened their own rewind shops to repair Westinghouse turbogenerators. That is all they did, their whole career in Westinghouse, what WOULD you expect them to do, with no other option to use their specialized knowledge?

Cheers,

George

This is very interesting. It seems kind of odd, but then again, that could very well be because I don't understand the details of the subject.

Jeff

I suspect it has to do with unending, but slowly increasing demand. When new generating capacity is added, it tends to become part of baseline after a while. That means we gotta have it. If we gotta have it, then we cannot do without it. Hence the need for backup.

I'm afraid, that as capacity grows, the price will tend to come down, creating MORE demand by industry. Kind of like building more freeways to 'ease' traffic congestion. A year after they are built, new roads are just as gridlocked.

Because god forbid industry expands its output (The only reason it would increase energy demand)

Thanks for explaining. I guess it would tend to go that way.

Jeff

Oh' I thought Obama was talking about creating American jobs! He must have ment Chinese jobs.

I used to work for a leading US product safety testing firm and had a lot of experience first hand with regulatory compliance hurdles in the renewable energy sector. Specifically, there were no nationally recognized safety standards for wind turbine assemblies(only the individual electrical components) and this was hampering a lot of wind installations.

If my memory serves me, your state passed a law stating unlisted electrical product installations don't need 3rd party inspections anymore.

Is that still the case? And does that make solar & wind installations easier in NC?

If you want to check out something funny Texas just loves wind power because they don't have to Share. This will over time cause businesses from other states to move to Texas because the power to run there plants will be cheaper.
Texas has there own power grid and can cut out the rest of the US at any time.

Why Texas has its own power grid. - By Brendan I. Koerner - Slate Magazine

I see a major "do not mess with Texas" movement if the feds pass cap and trade.
Republic of Texas (group) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
United Republic of Texas

LOL